I've been wargaming on and off since the early 1970s. The aim of this Blog is to share my general interest in wargaming, especially WWII.

Thursday, 9 January 2014

Kingdom of Heaven

With my Baltic Crusades project being flavour of the month with me at present (typical wargames butterfly that I am) I've been researching this period over the past week or so. Apart from the Osprey books mentioned in my previous post, there is very little out there for the average wargamer in terms of army lists, useful background info etc. This is not to say that the Osprey books are not good, which they are as one would expect. Fortunately for me Michael (Dalauppror) had mentioned the new 'Clash of Empires' source book , 'Kingdom of Heaven', from Great Escape Games on his Blog . It also received a good review in the latest 'Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy' magazine, which was a bonus. This looked to be ideal, but I thought I'd have a look around the internet first to see what I could find, before buying the book.

As mentioned above with a dearth of material out there, I went ahead and ordered the book today. At £20 inc p&p, I think this is a bargain for a book this size and with the amount of material contained therein. Apart from being useful for my Baltic Crusades project, it will be a perfect reference book for use with Craig's Star&Garter and The Crescent & The Cross Dux Bellorum variants.Below are a few pics from the book to give you an idea of what you get for your money:

So I'm now awaiting delivery, hopefully in time for the weekend, so that I can put together an order for some more lead goodies from Pendraken. With luck I will soon start posting some ideas for army lists etc.

4 comments:

Nice investment ! Stephen have realy tried to put as much information as possible about the "Perpetual Crusade" as he calls the Baltic Crusade in the Kingdom of Heaven book.

I suppouse you already have had a look at the "Arn" movies, its early 13th centery but might give you some inspiration. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0837106/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2and some clips here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwZQXhfX-mA

You also have the Russian film Aleksandr. Nevskaya bitva (2008) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1244496/

and some film clips here: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=battle+of+the+neva&sm=3

The Northern Crusades by Eric Christiansen, I havent read this book but by the look of the index etc it seems like a very interisting book in the subject. Noticed thet the rewies was all from 1 to 5...

The "Arn" movie is on Youtube in full, but not the TV version as far as I can tell. So at least I have something to watch over the weekend. I'll probably buy the book trilogy as well to get a feel for the period. They might even give me 'characters' for use in my Crusades. What's not to like?:)